From Top Down - both Pistons, Spurs "good people"

[Solid D]

You hear a lot about the Spurs lately being a model sports organization. You cannot ignore the similarity to the current Pistons team, from the top-down.

When Tim Duncan went down with a sprained ankle earlier this season in the 2nd meeting between the Spurs and Detroit, Pistons owner Bill Davidson offered one of his private planes to the Spurs so that Duncan could fly back to Texas immediately. It may or may not have been suggested by Larry Brown but the move was one of compassion.

"That's the kind of camaraderie that makes the NBA feel like a family," Popovich said. "There's the competition, and we all want to beat each other, but no one wants to see something like that happen. We were very impressed by the gesture, and we appreciate it very much. I'm sure Timmy does as well."

Joe Dumars has proven to be an excellent GM. He has always been viewed as a class guy and his quiet, competitive nature provides strength to the organization. The Pistons' international scouting is on a level with the Spurs, with extensive evaluations taking place in all areas of the globe. Pistons and Spurs personnel are frequently found in the same venues from South America to Serbia & Montenegro.

The current coaching staffs have similar philoslophies that go beyond playing good defense. Both Coach Pop and Coach Brown would use one of their own timeouts, at least in the regular season, if an opposing player went down and the action needed to be stopped.

That is why the 2005 NBA Finals has the makings for a classic matchup. Regardless of the outcome, expect the winners and losers to handle the situation with nothing but class and professionalism.

[Extra Stout]

If there is such a thing as a "sister franchise," the Pistons are the Spurs'.

[PistonFreak]

You hear a lot about the Spurs lately being a model sports organization. You cannot ignore the similarity to the current Pistons team, from the top-down.

When Tim Duncan went down with a sprained ankle earlier this season in the 2nd meeting between the Spurs and Detroit, Pistons owner Bill Davidson offered one of his private planes to the Spurs so that Duncan could fly back to Texas immediately. It may or may not have been suggested by Larry Brown but the move was one of compassion.

"That's the kind of camaraderie that makes the NBA feel like a family," Popovich said. "There's the competition, and we all want to beat each other, but no one wants to see something like that happen. We were very impressed by the gesture, and we appreciate it very much. I'm sure Timmy does as well."

Joe Dumars has proven to be an excellent GM. He has always been viewed as a class guy and his quiet, competitive nature provides strength to the organization. The Pistons' international scouting is on a level with the Spurs, with extensive evaluations taking place in all areas of the globe. Pistons and Spurs personnel are frequently found in the same venues from South America to Serbia & Montenegro.

The current coaching staffs have similar philoslophies that go beyond playing good defense. Both Coach Pop and Coach Brown would use one of their own timeouts, at least in the regular season, if an opposing player went down and the action needed to be stopped.

That is why the 2005 NBA Finals has the makings for a classic matchup. Regardless of the outcome, expect the winners and losers to handle the situation with nothing but class and professionalism.


Well said, that's why the fight thing was such a shock and surprise to everyone, including people in Michigan. The Palace and Pistons(their one in the same basicly) have a top notch operation.

[fekz]

If there is such a thing as a "sister franchise," the Pistons are the Spurs'.

Too bad the respect each organization has for each other doesn't translate into the fan base. Instead we get cowboy insults, and tired jokes about the brawl. In fact, those people should be coming in right about...................

[samikeyp]

Everyone lost in that brawl. It made the players and fans look bad. I do think that the majority of the fans for both teams are ok. It is a loud minority of both fan bases that get all the attention. The passion on both sides is very real and I think some people take it over the line.

[picnroll]

we get cowboy insults
..... choses to ignore.

[caustic13]

I'm from Detroit (gasp!!)...the brawl was truly embarrassing but keep in mind that millions of dollars couldn't make Artest maintain his professionalism! The media keeps on keepin' on with this brawl stuff so that everyone in the developed world will keep on with the Detroit stuff in general. Hey, the Miami Herald's Dan leBatard even compared Detroit to the bowels of hell! True, there are a lot of idiots out there who troll the boards...our boards took it from Philly, then Indy, then Miami, and I even had one guy threaten to come up to Detroit and kick my ass...and I'm a chick...
Sorry for the retarded, obnoxious ones. (Miami is STILL trolling us hard today)
And for the record, I HATE Eminem and wish he would fall into a port-a-john as it tipped over and rolled off a cliff. Kid Rock sucks and looks like a rodent.
That's my soapboxing, thank you and goodnight!

[MadDog73]

And my wife is a Spurs fan and loves Kid Rock (saw him in Las Vegas).

So, really, no stereotype is true!

[caustic13]

I'm so embarrassed that Kid Rock has become part of our stereotype, I'd almost rather be the murder capital again. (Just kidding...but close)

[Solid D]

Tony Ronzone is a key player.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101041011/nextscout.html


Looking For Mr. Really Big
An NBA superscout scours the globe in search of the next international star

By JOSH TYRANGIEL

http://i.timeinc.net/time/covers/1101041011/images/nextscout.jpg
Posted Sunday, October 3, 2004
Tony Ronzone likes to boast that he knows a word or two in several foreign languages. He might be better off if he didn't try to use them all at once. A few weeks ago, Ronzone, director of international scouting for the NBA champion Detroit Pistons, appeared at a basketball clinic in Mexico, where he attempted to teach a young Spanish-speaking prospect how best to position himself around the rim. "Demand the qiu!" Ronzone shouted. "Get your cerveza under the basket!" Qiu (pronounced chee-yo) is Chinese for ball. Cerveza means beer in Spanish. Ronzone may have confused cerveza with cabeza, Spanish for head, though he admits, "I'm not sure I knew that."

The irony that the world's best international basketball scout is also the world's worst student of foreign languages is not lost on Ronzone's peers. "He can't speak any language at all," laughs John Hammond, the Pistons' vice president of basketball operations. "Yet he travels to these obscure places and builds lasting relationships with all kinds of people. It's amazing." Adds Donn Nelson, the president of basketball operations for the Dallas Mavericks and one of Ronzone's old friends: "Tony's success is a tribute to his personality. He's just—I guess the word is unembarrassable."

Most people think of scouting as the ability to recognize talent. This—it turns out—is relatively easy. Good basketball players are usually quite tall, quite fast and quite adept at shooting a basketball. The difficult part in a world of 6 billion people is actually finding those who are tall, fast and coordinated, and the extremely difficult part is finding them before the competition does. Ronzone has conquered this problem despite his afflicted tongue by building a global network of coaches, journalists and friends who tip him off to the location of the world's most gifted young players. This network explains how, without a single word of Turkish, Ronzone was delivered to the remote island home of Mehmet Okur, an unknown even in his home country, who became a burgeoning star for the Pistons. And how, with little more than qiu, he wrangled an invite to a cramped Shanghai apartment for the 18th birthday party of a 7-ft. 6-in. kid named Yao Ming.

In order to stay in touch with more than 400 people on five continents in a meaningful way, one has to have a certain natural exuberance. "An uptight guy would not succeed at this job," says Pistons president Joe Dumars. "Tony will try every single food and drink. He'll smile. He'll laugh. He's easy to like." Ronzone was born bubbly, though he didn't take his act abroad until his college basketball career at Long Beach State ended, in 1988. At 6 ft. 2 in., he was too short to be an NBA prospect, so Ronzone played in leagues from Italy to the Philippines before becoming player-coach of New Zealand's Wonganui Wolfpack. Then, after an encounter with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, he became the first head coach of the Saudi national team. "It was right after the Gulf War in '91, so I hesitated," he recalls. "Then the prince offered to triple my salary." At the 1994 Goodwill Games in Russia he ran into Donn Nelson. "I couldn't believe how many people Tony knew and how much knowledge he had accumulated about international players," says Nelson. "I told him, you've got an incredible niche. You've got to bring this to the NBA." After a few more years in the Arabian sun, Ronzone joined the Dallas Mavericks in 1997 and based himself in China, where he and Nelson nudged the Chinese government into letting the Mavs sign 7-ft. 1-in. Wang Zhizhi (paving the way for Yao Ming's arrival in the U.S.). In 2001, Ronzone was poached by the Pistons, who, never having drafted an international player, gave him carte blanche to travel. After years of frequent-flying, though, Ronzone discovered he could cut back. "If I'm going to three normal countries—say, Italy, Spain and France—I now have friends I call in advance who direct me to players. A trip that used to take two weeks now takes four days."

This allows Ronzone to tack on what he calls "a random country," a Kazakhstan or a Congo, to the end of each journey. When he arrives—friendless and unannounced—his strategy for expanding his network frequently consists of walking up to people, saying hello and starting to talk about basketball in his train-wreck sentences. More often than not, they talk back. In Kazakhstan, a conversation with a hotel bellman led to the discovery of three raw but promising players at a club team. "Tony talks a lot, and that gets him into these places," says the Pistons' Hammond. "But he's also a very bright guy, and that shows up once he's inside."

As a rule, Ronzone looks for the same things most scouts look for: hand skills, shooting and footwork. "I'm really into watching feet," he says. "Can they run? Do they have balance?" Unlike most scouts, though, he never takes notes while evaluating players and usually refrains from asking a coach questions until a third or fourth meeting. "The big reason," he says, "is respect. Some guys go to practices and they focus on one player and scribble a bunch of notes; it comes off arrogant. The Kazakhs feel their club team is as important as the Pistons, and just because we like a player doesn't mean they'll give him up. I've got to respect their club that has bad rims, bad balls, bad floor. I'll invite them to Detroit to see one of our practices. Because if I do like one of their guys, we're going to need their help."

Most players Ronzone scouts have signed contracts in their home countries. These arrangements often have escape clauses, but they are generally at the discretion of management, and the NBA does not allow teams to pay international clubs more than $350,000. Ronzone can usually charm a team into releasing a player, but then he has to ask for an even bigger favor, often related to the NBA draft. That process has two rounds, with the worst teams having the best odds of picking first. Because the Pistons are one of the league's best teams, as many as 30 teams have to pass on a player before the Pistons get a shot at him. The only way to ensure that the Pistons get their man is to make sure the other 30 teams do not know the player exists. (In Yao's case, Ronzone saw him early, but you can't keep a guy like that a secret for long.) "We're getting into some shady territory now," says Ronzone, with a smile. "You don't really ask anybody to hide a player, but you make it clear you'd appreciate it if they don't show him off." Because Mehmet Okur was effectively hidden until a week before the 2001 draft, the Pistons were able to grab him in the second round with the 38th pick. "To get a kid in the second round that should be in the first round, save the organization money and beat out other teams," says Ronzone, "is a huge high."

With so many people helping him find talent and keep secrets, Ronzone now spends as much time maintaining contacts as scouting players. Some of the favors he does are fairly minor. When an Israeli journalist he knows asks for an interview with a Pistons player, Ronzone sets it up instantly. "It's easy for me to do," he says, "and there are a couple of players over there I really like. This guy could help me find out their contract info, or at least get me some good falafel."

For the short-term future, Ronzone's latest project is a 7-ft. Greek player the Pistons drafted last year, Andreas Glyniadakis. "He's tall, he's agile, but he's getting a little soft playing in the Greek leagues," says the scout. "No offense to the Greeks; it's just a soft league. I may try to move him someplace tougher in Europe, and in a year or two he could be a force."

In the meantime, Ronzone continues to seek talent in out-of-the-way places. The hoops clinic in Mazatlán, Mexico, is not a hotbed of basketball talent, but the country's national team coach, Guillermo Vecchio, is an old friend. "The first time I met Tony," says Vecchio, "I think, who is this crazy son of a b____? But he comes here, he teaches our coaches and tries to make us better. I would do anything for this crazy son of a b____." Says Ronzone: "It's a couple hours on a plane and a few days of talking basketball. Maybe I'll never get a kid from here. But I love seeing Vecchio, and now all these coaches from all these little towns are my friends too. And, by the way, I think I will find somebody here. It's a nice little untapped market." A few minutes later, Ronzone is smiling broadly. "Vecchio said he's got a kid outside Tijuana I gotta see—6 ft. 11, 14 years old. Excellento, baby!"

[MainEvent]

I'm fired up for this series. I wanted the Spurs last year because they were the champs and I wanted to go through them for the title. This is going to be a knockdown drag out that should go 6-7 games. The Spurs are the most versatile team in the league, but the Pistons match up very well with them at every position across the board, better than any other team in the league. The x factor in this series is really going to be Ginobili. He's been the catalyst for a lot of the Spurs success in this postseason and the Pistons have to keep him under wraps if they expect to win.

[nkdlunch]

I'm fired up for this series. I wanted the Spurs last year because they were the champs and I wanted to go through them for the title. This is going to be a knockdown drag out that should go 6-7 games. The Spurs are the most versatile team in the league, but the Pistons match up very well with them at every position across the board, better than any other team in the league. The x factor in this series is really going to be Ginobili. He's been the catalyst for a lot of the Spurs success in this postseason and the Pistons have to keep him under wraps if they expect to win.

Good 1st post dude

[samikeyp]

I'm from Detroit (gasp!!)...the brawl was truly embarrassing but keep in mind that millions of dollars couldn't make Artest maintain his professionalism! The media keeps on keepin' on with this brawl stuff so that everyone in the developed world will keep on with the Detroit stuff in general. Hey, the Miami Herald's Dan leBatard even compared Detroit to the bowels of hell! True, there are a lot of idiots out there who troll the boards...our boards took it from Philly, then Indy, then Miami, and I even had one guy threaten to come up to Detroit and kick my ass...and I'm a chick...
Sorry for the retarded, obnoxious ones. (Miami is STILL trolling us hard today)
And for the record, I HATE Eminem and wish he would fall into a port-a-john as it tipped over and rolled off a cliff. Kid Rock sucks and looks like a rodent.
That's my soapboxing, thank you and goodnight!

:lmao :lmao
that was great! Nice job and welcome.

[MainEvent]

Thanks, nkdlunch. I don't usually post in opposing teams forums, but the Spurs are about the only other team that I really admit to liking in the NBA. They are a class organization, and how can you not love players like TD and Ginobili?

[Lurks-a-lot]

First post from a Pistons fan.

Solid D hit the nail on the head, I have the utmost respect for your organization, your coach, your players and team. For the first time ever the thought of losing a playoff series doesn't make me spontiously go into convulsions and start vomiting. If we do end up losing this series I will accept the fact that the Spurs just may be a better team then us. The Pistons and the Spurs eptimize what basketball is about, 5 guys battling and working together to win a game, they don't care who is scoring the points or getting the shots, just 5 guys doing whatever it takes to win a game.

Anyways, I hope you guys don't mind if I lurk around, I enjoy reading other team's fans opinions and anaylist on the games because it can bring a less biased view. Also I hope a few bad apples don't taint your view of all pistons fans; each team has the occasion troll so please try and not generalize us in one big group :).

[THE X-FACTOR]

I am a life long Pistons fan but the Spurs are my second favorite team. I hope for a great series. For once the Pistons are playing a team I can't hate.

[MiNuS]

Thank GOD games are going to be played Central time and Eastern time. That means going to sleep earlier! I hated the Sonics series for the time games were being played!

Detroit's got my respect.

[coz]

too much love in here, i want to vomit. I must agree with the posts though, I can't hate Detroit, they're like the Spurs Jr. Watching the pistons play is like watching the spurs in blue. I dig the pistons, but for the next two weeks:

Hashweed's next technical should be his last. kick him out of the NBA. I also can't stand that one damn spot of gray. shave the head or buy some damn hair dye!

Prince needs to get some Jacko treatment for those nasty ass freckles.

Billups is a scrub, overated scrub.

Anyone who wears a mask in the NBA is a wuss.

Ben needs a damn haircut.

[T Park]

come on Coz dont run smack.

I respect Detroit a ton.

Itll be a bitch trying to beat them.

[jochhejaam]

That's one of the things I'm looking forward to in this series, the Spurs don't have any jerks (like Mourning) or big mouths (like Shaq) on their team. Like the Pistons, they prefer to let their game do the talking.

Both teams have tough, hard nose players that play with a lot of heart. Should be a great series!

[Sek-cMan]

The pistons are a solid team. I think the biggest factor in this series is going to be composure. The series with these 2 team can be broken down to about 50% physical, 20 % heart , and 30% mental. Meaning I have seen games with both teams were letting the other team get in there heads causes serious mistakes. On the other hand I have seen both team use that same disadvantage to fuel the fire. Both teams are clearly the best of the era in the NBA. I look forward to the series, and may the best men win. (hopefully the spurs)

[whottt]

I love Ben Wallace and I like Rip and Prince...

But Billups has a look on his face that makes me want to smack the shit out of him, this dude thinks he's the baddest player to ever step on an NBA court...I want to tell him...hey motherfucker...you have underachieved your entire career and were a lottery bust...stop acting like you are Jordan.

And I don't like Rasheed...even though he is funny.

But ultimately....any place that gave us:

http://www.undercover.com.au/pics/tednugent1978.jpg




Is ok with me...and can be forgiven for producing Kid Rock.

That guy pictured above more than makes up for it...


But you guys are gonna be the ones in the stranglehold...and why don't ya'll play that song on defensive stands in the 4th? Shit like that is why you deserve to lose this series.

[Sense]

I've never heard a team unless there's a cocky player on it like Kobe,Shaq, or Ray Allen...


It's not the team most of the times..it's the fans.

[milkyway21]

so does it make Rasheed good person, too?

:nope

Rasheed is sometimes irritable for me...the guys complains a lot:rolleyes Hope he mend his ways a little bit, might get his team in trouble if he gets ejected in a game in the finals.

[myhc]

Let me pile on to the Pistons love. You guys have a class organization from top to bottom. I'll be disappointed if we lose the series but if had to be to 1 team, I'll be glad its to the Pistons.

And the city that gives birth to the MC5 and the Stooges I cannot hate!!!!!